the techno-social environment

semi‐public parlors where people choose their company and set their own rules, spaces that prioritize continuity over reach and coherence over chaos. People will show up not to go viral, but to be seen in context. None of this is about escaping the social internet, but about reclaiming its scale, pace, and purpose.

The timeline is no longer a source of information or social presence, but more of a mood-regulation device, endlessly replenishing itself with just enough novelty to suppress the anxiety of stopping. Scrolling has become a form of ambient dissociation, half-conscious, half-compulsive, closer to scratching an itch than seeking anything in particular... See more

“Social media is dead” is now the official tech ideology because “social media” successfully served its purpose as an alibi for the complete digitization of experience, promulgating the idea that everything is information, everything can be quantified, and that human beings can enjoy themselves in a system that doesn’t register anything qualitative... See more

So a medium is a human innovation which enhances, amplifies, extends some human sense or function, as a cup amplifies our ability to drink water or liquid; a telephone, our ability to speak with someone. In turn, this creates a new medium or new human environment for us with new ‘services and disservices’ or affordances and consequences. It makes s... See more

“To say that any technology or extension of man creates a new environment is a much better way of saying the medium is the message. Moreover this environment is always invisible and its content is always the old technology.”

But it is not clear whether such systems – even if they work as advertised – can solve the problem of reliable knowledge in a balkanised public sphere. Just as commercial incentives led to fake content and filter-bubbles, LLMs likely face the same pressures in a world of sharply diminishing returns. Because the firms training them desperately need ... See more

Much of what we do is immediately authenticated as we do it, stored as data, classified or scored on some sort of scale, and deployed in real time to modulate some outcome of interest – usually, the behaviour of a person, or a machine, or an organisation.